


Observed

by Intent_To_Stay



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror, Photography, Psychological Horror, being watched, heavily inspired by the magnus archives, the inherent noneroticism of people noticing you in public
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23236468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intent_To_Stay/pseuds/Intent_To_Stay
Summary: People look at you differently when you are holding a camera. I should know. I photograph plenty of events. You’ve likely seen me. I’ve certainly seen you.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Observed

People look at you differently when you are holding a camera. I should know. I photograph plenty of events. You’ve likely seen me. I’ve certainly seen you.

It’s not the same look as when people know they are being photographed. Not at all. When a lens is pointed towards a person, the performance comes out. The chin lifted, the smile deepened, the student suddenly so much more interested, the speaker more passionate, the dancer more fluid. It is the reminder of being watched. It makes you sit up and pay attention. Not only are you being observed by a glass cyclops of indeterminate maliciousness and debatable skill; you are being preserved. A fraction of you is frozen in this moment, and you cannot change that. You can only define that which you leave.

You will be preserved. Outside of drastic measures, there is little you can do to change that. There’s the instinctive reflex to make do with this lack of choice--to take this violation and make it somewhat worth having. That’s how I see it. No one wants to be eternally frozen at their worst.

Some people like to be contrary, of course. There is always someone. They stare at the camera. They make faces. They take a candid and revoke the right to portrayed ignorance. The image becomes uncomfortable. There is no consent; not the knowing grimace for a portrait, nor the theatrical bearing of someone putting their best foot forward.

It is effective. I often have to throw these photos out. But they still exist.

I curate these documents so that others can look. And like you must understand, like the feeling in the pit of the stomach when the camera winks, it is uncomfortable to be watched. The audience should never be burdened by participation. They are very delicate. Stare back in the wrong setting, and your photo will provoke uneasiness. It just ruins the moment. The implicit statement of judgement. Of preservation.

But really, how people look in front of camera is a source of speculation. There’s all sorts of studies and meditations on it, I bet. Surveillance states and film, smart phones and cheap cameras, spy eyes and Santa Clause and God. Being watched isn’t exactly an alien concept. Being recorded is often just understood as adjacent to memory, and that isn’t a wrong assumption. It’s really a purer kind of memory. A moment divorced from context and schema. One that can be known with viral intensity or stored away somewhere and forgotten. It’s incorruptible and lovely like that.

We know already how uncanny it is to be watched. There is less literature on the watcher. There is a particular hazard that comes with documenting. It’s not necessarily hostile. We live in a very polite world. We subject ourselves to discomfort regularly. We consent to being recorded in the grocery aisle and in the street. We even find comfort in it, because with a recording comes accountability and alibi. _Smile: You’re on camera._ But a random camera has no intentions and it bears no judgement and it doesn’t care about you. It is easier to dismiss because there is nothing to it. You can know that you are being recorded, but there’s no human element to drive home that you are being consumed. Cameras do not eat or digest. They do not chew.

People don’t like the documenter because we are more than an eye. A select few appreciate your services and hire you because they want the results of your work. We are essential for entertainment, but that doesn’t count. Everything there is fake. The birthday party only requires a snapshot of a song and candles. Anyone can capture that moment, and they can be trusted to love it. One can be wanted, appreciated, and valued in a select venue, but the fact remains that these venues comprise only a fraction of the events I attend. The truth of the matter is that we are wanted for the wedding and not for the funeral or the bad hair day; and when you yourself have not requested a photograph, the average day is not one in which you want to be bottled for another’s perpetual consumption.

But because I am there whether you like it or not, and because I will preserve you in this moment whether you like it or not, and because there is very little you can do about this violation and every moment that comes afterwards, you don’t like me.

That’s quite understandable. I do not like it either. But we regularly submit ourselves to discomfort, and when I am behind the camera I am at least never recorded.

I will attend the events I am requested for, and I will take note of who is uncomfortable, and I will avoid them unless they are in a particularly good light or interesting environment or talking to someone important. Discomfort makes for a bad picture. Or perhaps I will duck my head and fiddle with the settings and wait until you have forgotten about me. I can be patient. I can make this a gentle process. The audience may be delicate, but the subject is skittish.

I spoke disdainfully of entertainment, but I will not deny that it is easier to stage something interesting than to catch it in the wild. Perhaps it is more that I am jealous of those who have been given consent. I don’t _enjoy_ trespassing. I don’t delight in how much time I spend observing a grainy face and debating which image will make the most people happy when the subjects never had a choice in the matter. Not when I can tell by the grimace in one photo that has been wiped away in the next that the lack of choice has not gone unnoticed.

But if I am being honest, I also don’t really care. If I truly hated my profession so much, I could simply quit. There are the little joys in moments that I capture (and sometimes don’t), and there is plenty of satisfaction to be found in the artistry of photography. Even the repetitive process of editing a batch of images is soothing. Increasing the contrast and upping the exposure is like scratching an itch, even if squinting at a screen so much makes my eyes ache. If I really placed so much emotional stock in a violating snapshot, I simply wouldn’t be able to do it. Which subsequently means that I don’t mind your discomfort, and I do appreciate it when you stage yourself. It does help, and we do notice the effort, and we do our best to make sure you look as good as possible.

You and I are a team, really. Just pretend you don’t notice the camera. We can both pretend this isn’t happening.

Actually, that is wistful thinking. But if it makes things comfortable, please believe it.

People look at you differently when you are holding a camera because you are different. I am marked by an eye bigger than my mouth and a crystalline memory and a capacity for intent. I am part of a moment and not a part of it. You understand, right? You get it, don’t you? While I may be present, I am there to observe. Thus I am separate.

You will look at me and notice me and then pretend not to have done so. I will watch and record and view you through glass so that any eye-contact is paradoxically one-sided. It will be uncomfortable. I will be the cause of this discomfort. Instinctively, you will seek some control, and thus you will stage yourself or break the candid. But in that second before you do, you will take a modicum of revenge for this trespass, and it will build in the way that any mass action effect does: Incrementally. Stare by stare. Eye by eye. I am outnumbered and unloved, and none of us will talk about the aberration that occurs when I document because at the end of the day we are polite and accustomed to discomfort.

But I see how you look at me when I preserve you. I am the audience who is not given the option of non-participation. Not while I am holding the camera. Not when the observed observe me.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a horror essay? I guess? Was it actually creepy? Not sure.


End file.
